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Critical strike
Physical Critical strikes deal +100% normal damage (2.0 times your normal damage). To see your chance to crit, open your spellbook, and hover your mouse over the "attack" ability. The tooltip will show your percent chance to crit. The base chance for melee critical hits is derived from the agility score and can be found in the Formulas:Agility article. Attack Rating and Defense Mobs which are the same level as you always have a 5% chance to crit. A mob or players crit chance can be modified by the difference between the attackers effective Attack Rating and the Defense of the target. The effective attack rating is normally the skill with the currently equipped weapon (WS = Weapon Skill). When attacking mobs, the effective AR cannot be higher than player level * 5. This table assumes a player attacking either a mob or another player: Equipment Equipment which increases critical hit rate stacks together, so it is possible to achieve relatively high critical hit rates (20% are easily possible with pre-Karazan gear). A non-spell attack on a sitting target will always be a critical hit. Effect of increased crit or hit chance Both, increased hit and crit chance have a kind of "diminishing returns" mechanic built in. A 1% increase of either stat will not increase the total damage output by 1%, but usually by a little less. Consider the following Attack table: #2% base miss #5% dodge #5% parry #5% block #25% crit Damage = BaseDamage * ((1.00 - 0.02 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.25) + 2 * 0.25) = BaseDamage * 1.08 (With 0% crit we'd do 83% of BaseDamage) Now the same calculation with 26% crit chance: Damage = BaseDamage * ((1.00 - 0.02 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.26) + 2 * 0.26) = BaseDamage * 1.09 We increased the total damage output by 1% of the base damage. Since the total output is more than 100% of that base damage, the actual increase in total damage output is "only" 0.93%. If the total output is siginificantly greater than the base damage, this percentage will be smaller, if the total output is below the base damage, the resulting increase will even be higher than 1%. What's better, +to hit or +crit? In principle they are equal. Which is better depends on circumstances. An increase in hit rate will usually yield a constant level of damage, whereas a high crit chance gives a spiky, more random damage distribution over time. An important factor is whether there are procs related to either hits or critical hits. Also, both ratings have caps. To hit can only be used to counter the base chance to miss (5% for one-hand users without any off-hand weapon, 9% for two-handers and 24% for dualwielders), whereas the crit chance cannot become higher than the hit chance. If a dualwielder attacks a target with a high chance to dodge or parry the attacker can lose crit chance because the attack table is full (see the Attack table article). Spells For spells most of the above is valid. The base chance for spell crits can be found in the table at the Intellect Article. Normally, spell crits increase damage by only 50%, but Mage/Shaman/Warlock/Druid have talents to increase this to 100%. Similarly, critical heals will heal 150% their normal amounts. The 200% crit talent has no effect on heals. According to the Spell Hit Chance article, the miss chance starts at 4% vs. same-level targets and is 17% vs. mobs 3 levels higher (the highest end bosses are lvl 73). A 1% miss chance cannot be avoided, thus in PvP or vs. same-level mobs, no more than a 3% increase in hit chance is needed, whereas the maximum which can be useful under any circumstances is +16% vs. lvl 73 end bosses. What's better: +Spell Hit or + Spell Crit? All other things being equal and without considering talents, an 1% increase in spell crit chance will result in a gain of 0.5% of a spell's base damage, whereas a 1% increase in spell hit chance will give a 1% increase of a spell's base damage. As long as no other effects come into play, +spell hit rating is more effective than +spell crit rating. But although increasing +spell hit over 99% is not a complete waste if using binary against a resist chance (since in that case the resist chance works as a reduction of the hit chance), in general a 99% spell hit chance will be sufficient for most casters. If a Mage has taken the Ice Shards or Spell Power talent to increase the crit damage to 200%, hit and crit are basically equal, similar to the situation as it exists with physical damage. Other classes have similar "increase critical strike damage by 50%" talents. Currently it is not clear whether spell casting is based on a one-roll system (like "normal" melee) or not (see Formulas:Spell hit chance) Another important factor to consider are the many effects which can proc from spell crits. These include a mage's Ignite, a warlock's Improved Shadow Bolt, shamans and paladins saving mana on spell crits, and holy spec priests can proccing an armor buff on heal crits (see Inspiration). For many shadow priests, +spell crit rating on gear is considered to be of very little help. The normal rotation of damage spells used by a shadow priest contains only two, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death, that are capable of a critical, and both have lengthy cooldowns that make continual use impossible – and Shadow Word: Death being used at the end of a battle means that any critical effect is generally wasted. As such, +spell crit rating is one of the least valued gear attributes for many shadow priests, although that is not to say that it has no use (particularly for priests that choose the Shadow Power talent). Added +spell hit can be very helpful to shadow priests, however, especially in PvE boss fights or for shadow priests that have not invested in the Shadow Focus talent. For dedicated healers, +spell hit rating is essentially worthless. Spells cast on friendly targets (such as heals, buffs, and dispels/cures) always hit. However, +spell crit rating improves the chance of getting a critical effect on helpful and harmful spells alike. Although it is not advisable to rely on the extra healing granted by critical effects from healing spells, a lucky critical heal in a fight going badly could mean the difference between life and death for a group member, or even the entire group. Even if a critical heal results in an overheal, this extra healing has no impact on the threat generated by the healer. Additionally, there are talents available to priests and shamans which grant a short-duration armor buff to the recipient of a critical heal. When given the choice between +spell hit rating and +spell crit rating, a primary healer will always benefit from more +crit, while they will see little if any benefit from +spell hit rating. Just to be clear, if an item says "Improves spell critical strike rating", it will also improve the crit chance of healing spells. Paladins also have the Illumination talent, which gives them back 60% mana of the healing spell they crit on. Since this essentially amounts to an average reduction in mana costs for a paladin healer, it's common for paladins to stack +spell crit rating, and find themselves in the area of 25% crit chance.